Emily Saunders herself met the newcomer at the station, looking very unlike an invalid,--looking indeed particularly well and happy, if rather pale, as she was always pale, and a little too fat after the idle and carefully-fed experience in the hospital. Susan peeped into Miss Ella's big room, as they went upstairs. Ella was stretched comfortably on a wide, flowery couch, reading as her maid rubbed her loosened hair with some fragrant toilet water, and munching chocolates.
"Hello, Susan Brown!" she called out. "Come in and see me some time before dinner,--I'm going out!"
Ella's room was on the second floor, where were also Mrs. Saunders' room, various guest-rooms, an upstairs music-room and a sitting-room. But Emily's apartment, as well as her brother's, were on the third floor, and Susan's delightful room opened from Emily's. The girls had a bathroom as large as a small bedroom, and a splendid deep balcony shaded by gay awnings was accessible only to them. Potted geraniums made this big outdoor room gay, a thick Indian rug was on the floor, there were deep wicker chairs, and two beds, in day-covers of green linen, with thick brightly colored Pueblo blankets folded across them. The girls were to spend all their days in the open air, and sleep out here whenever possible for Emily's sake.
While Emily bathed, before dinner, Susan hung over the balcony rail, feeling deliciously fresh and rested, after her own bath, and eager not to miss a moment of the lovely summer afternoon. Just below her, the garden was full of roses. There were other flowers, too, carnations and velvety Shasta daisies, there were snowballs that tumbled in great heaps of white on the smooth lawn, and syringas and wall-flowers and corn-flowers, far over by the vine-embroidered stone wall, and late Persian lilacs, and hydrangeas, in every lovely tone between pink and lavender, filled a long line of great wooden Japanese tubs, leading, by a walk of sunken stones, to the black wooden gates of the Japanese garden. But the roses reigned supreme--beautiful standard roses, with not a shriveled leaf to mar the perfection of blossoms and foliage; San Rafael roses, flinging out wherever they could find a support, great sprays of pinkish-yellow and yellowish-pink, and gold and cream and apricot-colored blossoms. There were moss roses, sheathed in dark-green film, glowing Jacqueminot and Papagontier and La France roses, white roses, and yellow roses,--Susan felt as if she could intoxicate herself upon the sweetness and the beauty of them all.
The carriage road swept in a great curve from the gate, its smooth pebbled surface crossed sharply at regular intervals by the clean-cut shadows of the elm trees. Here and there on the lawns a sprinkler flung out its whirling circles of spray, and while Susan watched a gardener came into view, picked up a few fallen leaves from the roadway and crushed them together in his hand.
On the newly-watered stretch of road that showed beyond the wide gates, carriages and carts, and an occasional motor-car were passing, flinging wheeling shadows beside them on the road, and driven by girls in light gowns and wide hats or by grooms in livery. Presently one very smart, high English cart stopped, and Mr. Kenneth Saunders got down from it, and stood whipping his riding-boot with his crap and chatting with the young woman who had driven him home. Susan thought him a very attractive young man, with his quiet, almost melancholy expression, and his air of knowing exactly the correct thing to do, whenever he cared to exert himself at all.
She watched him now with interest, not afraid of detection, for a small head, on a third story balcony, would be quite lost among the details of the immense facade of the house. He walked toward the stable, and whistled what was evidently a signal, for three romping collies came running to meet him, and were leaping and tumbling about him as he went around the curve of the drive and out of sight. Then Susan went back to her watching and dreaming, finding something new to admire and delight in every moment. The details confused her, but she found the whole charming.
Indeed, she had been in San Rafael for several weeks before she found the view of the big house from the garden anything but bewildering. With its wings and ells, its flowered balconies and French windows, its tiled pergola and flower-lined Spanish court, it stood a monument to the extraordinary powers of the modern architect; nothing was incongruous, nothing offended. Susan liked to decide into which room this casement window fitted, or why she never noticed that particular angle of wall from the inside. It was always a disappointment to discover that some of the quaintest of the windows lighted only linen-closets or perhaps useless little spaces under a sharp angle of roof, and that many of the most attractive lines outside were so cut and divided as to be unrecognizable within.
It was a modern house, with beautifully-appointed closets tucked in wherever there was an inch to spare, with sheets of mirror set in the bedroom doors, with every conceivable convenience in nickel-plate glittering in its bathrooms, and wall-telephones everywhere.
The girl's adjectives were exhausted long before she had seen half of it. She tried to make her own personal choice between the dull, soft, dark colors and carved Circassian walnut furniture in the dining-room, and the sharp contrast of the reception hall, where the sunlight flooded a rosy-latticed paper, an old white Colonial mantel and fiddle-backed chairs, and struck dazzling gleams from the brass fire-dogs and irons. The drawing-room had its own charm; the largest room in the house, it had French windows on three sides, each one giving a separate and exquisite glimpse of lawns and garden beyond. Upon its dark and shining floor were stretched a score of silky Persian rugs, roses mirrored themselves in polished mahogany, and here and there were priceless bits of carved ivory, wonderful strips of embroidered Chinese silks, miniatures, and exquisite books. Four or five great lamps glowing under mosaic shades made the place lovely at night, but in the heat of a summer day, shaded, empty, deliciously airy and cool, Susan thought it at its loveliest. At night heavy brocaded curtains were drawn across the windows, and a wood fire crackled in the fireplace, in a setting of creamy tiles. There was a small grand-piano in this room, a larger piano in the big, empty reception room on the other side of the house, Susan and Emily had a small upright for their own use, and there were one or two more in other parts of the house.